


Glitch in the System: Heroes Never Die

by SystemGlitch



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-17
Updated: 2018-02-17
Packaged: 2019-03-20 12:47:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13717995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SystemGlitch/pseuds/SystemGlitch
Summary: By E.Goodbye happens.





	Glitch in the System: Heroes Never Die

The interception had gone rather well, all things considered. It was a small sting, barely even a mission, really - just sweeping away some small arms dealers that had gotten under Akande’s skin lately. Sombra hadn’t bothered asking why. Akande wasn’t known for his candid nature regarding his motives. Besides which - she didn’t really care. She was just glad to be out of the house.

“Target locked,” Widow said from her perch on the roof of one of the many outbuildings lining the lumber yard. It was expansive and open, but more cluttered than a teenager’s bedroom. Stacks of cut wood and metal scrap littered the ground, providing ample cover and an easy route through the yard. Sombra was on the ground, scanning for tech she might use to their advantage. It was slim pickings - they only truly mechanical thing around were some idling trucks and hoverdrones mindlessly carting boxes around.

Their targets were gathered around the flatbed of one of these trucks, slowly removing crate after crate of what Sombra knew were high-tech weaponry meant for some unknown competitor. Their goal was to secure these weapons, and, if that proved to be impossible - destroy them. Sombra figured they had a better chance of the former if she could find a way to separate the crew from their goods.

She slipped towards one of the drones, grabbing it from behind. It made a shrill, metallic sound of protest, and before it could initiate any defense protocols, she’d neutralized its neurotechnical network and began the process of reprogramming. Unlike an omnic, with complex internal processes and autonomy, the worker drones were straight machine, made for one job and with zero cognitive function. It was like hacking a lawnmower.

“Get ready for some chaos,” Sombra announced over her comms, finishing up with the robot and patting it on its chassis. “Get on out there, champ,” she said. The drone trilled again and sped away from Sombra into the center of the room, following its new protocol.

It hit the first smuggler with a wet crack of metal on flesh, slamming into it with the force of a thing created for brutality, not tactics. There was no finesse, but that didn’t matter to the bones it shattered on impact. Its target, a grizzled man holding a pulse rifle, fell to the ground with a pained shout.

“Next!” Sombra announced, hacking a second drone and sending it to join its companion. At the appearance of a second hostile omnic, the smugglers stopped their stunned stares and sought cover.

“There you go,” Sombra said.

“ _Par excellence_ , as per usual,” came Widow’s response, echoed by the first ringing shot of the night. “I do prefer a moving target.”

“Not sure whether you’re sassing me, but good luck,” Sombra replied, laughing as she vanished from sight. Leaping over a bench, she intercepted one of the fleeing dealers, clotheslining her with her gun and filling her chest with bullets as she fell.

Two more shots pinged into the room, both finding a mark.

“How’s it looking?” Sombra asked, scanning the area herself.

“Two left. One behind a pile of lumber to the left of the truck, one behind the crates on the right.”

Sombra tossed her translocator behind the stack of wooden boxes in the corner, appearing behind Widow’s unsuspecting target with an electric crack.

“Out,” she said, pushing him into the open. The man had enough time to stumble and look back at her in confusion before Widow sent him to the ground in a spray of brain and blood. “Lumber?”

“ _Oui,_ ” Widow replied. Sombra heard her gun reloading. “Unarmed.”

“Perfect,” she laughed. With unabashed confidence, Sombra stepped out from the cargo and started for the table. “Come on out,  _amigo_ ,” she said, crooking her finger. “Talon needs us back before dark.”

There was the sound of shuffling, and Sombra saw a face peer out from behind the table cautiously: a pair of frightened blue eyes framed with scraggly dark hair.

“Olivia?” the man said, keeping his head low as he hid behind the lumber. Weapons were splayed across the floor and she stepped over them gingerly on her way to the cowering operative.

At the sound of her name, she stopped dead in her tracks. “Excuse me?” she said, voice deadly quiet.

“I can take the shot,” Widow said.

“Wait,” she said, holding up her hand.

There was a pause. “Ok,” the sniper said, and Sombra could hear the reluctance in her voice. There was nothing Widowmaker hated more than waiting on a kill.

Sombra vanished, slipping behind the man and reappearing with an arm around his neck and a gun pressed to his temple. “ _Hable_ ,” she threatened, “ _o yo te voy a matar._ ”

“ _Soy yo_!” the man yelped, not expecting her to vanish, let alone appear behind him with a choke hold and a death threat. “Miguel.” Sombra could feel him swallow nervously. “ _De Dorado_?”

Sombra felt a jolt of adrenaline shoot through her like ice in her veins. She dropped her arm and her gun, grabbing the man by the shoulder and turning him to face her. “ _En serio_?” she asked incredulously, eyes scanning the lines of his face. He was older, to be sure, and had a scar she didn’t recognize, but there was no doubt it was him. “What are you doing here?”

“Working,” he replied, still nervous. “Or I guess I was working until you murdered my coworkers.”

Sombra laughed, uncertain if it was the best response, but the situation had rapidly descended into something she’d not prepared herself for. “Consider it a promotion,” she replied, smiling. Then, before Miguel could respond, she pulled him in for a hug.

“Sombra?” Widow said from her perch through their comms. “Are you hugging the target?”

“It’s ok, Widow, I -” she paused, stepping back from him, and finding her words startlingly difficult to come by, “I know him.”

“Oh?”

“Just…hold position. I’ll be up soon.”

“ _Oui, cherie_ ,” she replied easily, and Sombra saw her leap across the space between buildings and take up position above them, keeping an eye on the location.

Miguel stared at her for a long time, taking his time choosing what to say. “So, Talon?” he said finally. “From one group of bullies to another.” There was no malice in his voice, but Sombra winced regardless.

“You know I only work for myself,” she replied. “Organized crime is just a means to an end.”

Miguel laughed, offering her a smile that reached his eyes. “Yeah, you always were great at playing the players. I knew you’d be destined for great things if you ever escaped Los Muertos.” He looked at her closely for a moment, eyes roving over her face, clearly trying to find the words to speak. “You know, I’d always wondered,” he said finally.

“Wondered what?”

“If it was you,” he said.

Sombra stiffened. “If what was me?” she asked carefully. Her identity had been cracked once, and only once before, and  _that_  leak was safely plugged behind a wad of nationalist guilt and existential crisis named Alexandra Zaryanova. Any more cracks and she might start having a hard time keeping the flood at bay.

“The mysterious hacker plaguing the world. The one who could vanish from sight; the shadow that saved Mexico from the thumb of LumériCo. ‘Talon’s new pain in the ass,’ the boss would say every time he heard some new intel on  _la sombra_. We made jokes back home, you know?” He laughed, shaking his head. “That you’d somehow escaped Los Muertos and gone undercover. Sombra’s a fuckin’ hero back home, and, I dunno,” he shrugged. “I guess it felt nice to maybe know a hero.”

Sombra felt her throat close up, dry as a bone, leaving her speechless and with a growing knot of fear forming in her chest. This was not a link she’d wanted anyone to make. In fact, it was a link she had gone out of her way to eradicate, and here was Miguel - the blustery kid always getting himself into fights - making the connection because of a chance run in on a throwaway mission.

“I wouldn’t exactly call me a hero,” she replied finally, unwilling to admit what he said was true, but knowing it was useless to waste breath denying it. “Maybe a dead legend.”

“I don’t know that I ever really believed it until now. We all thought you’d died,” Miguel said, looking at her as though she were a ghost. She supposed, in a sense, she was, to him.

Sombra laughed. “Good. That was sort of the point.”

“We held a funeral,” he said, no trace of mirth in his voice. Sombra sobered quickly; she’d never considered the effect of her disappearance on her friends. Everything had been so fast, so dire for her then. Friends had been an obstacle in the way of success, and cutting those ties seemed like a more than reasonable sacrifice for the power she craved. She maintained business ties with Los Muertos and kept in touch with enough of them to keep them in her back pocket, but the orphans who saw her through the death of her parents and the fall of her city?

No, they were a bridge better left burned. At this point, it was for their own safety.

“It wasn’t really a choice,” she countered lamely, unwilling to divulge any details about herself. She was uncomfortable enough as it was facing down her past like this; talking to it, catching up on old times. There was nothing about Olivia she wished to reclaim. Like Amelie, there was nothing about  _her_  that was Olivia anymore, and it was a reality she was content with.

“You always have a choice,” he replied, sad smile creeping across his face.

Sombra looked up, frowning. “How can you say that?” she asked, feeling a spark ignite inside her. “We  _never_ had options. We just had to make the least shitty decision.”

“And yours?” he asked, eyebrow raised. “Did you make the least shitty decision when you disappeared?”

Sombra bristled, the desire to run creeping up inside her like nausea. She couldn’t begin to explain the myriad reasons behind her choices: why she left, why she changed, why she killed Olivia and buried her too far for anyone to find.

Until now, at least. Every corpse is dug up eventually, she supposed.

“If you knew the alternatives, we might not be having this argument,” she replied finally, voice low.

Miguel opened his mouth to respond, then closed it and shook his head. “Listen, I’m sorry, I just…I’ve missed you, Olivia,” he said, reaching for her hand. “Forget the hell of the past. Maybe we’ve found each other by fate?”

Miguel’s smile was genuine, and a little bit sad. He’d held his torch for so long, from the day they’d met until this very moment. She’d always known; even in the darkest days on the streets of Dorado, it had burned beneath the shadow of the omnic plague and through all the terrible decisions they’d had to make. He had been one of her very best friends, and she would have done almost anything for him when they were kids, but she’d never carried the same flame.

Sombra let him hold her hand for a moment longer than she otherwise may have, in tribute to nostalgia and the shared pain of their past.

That was all they shared, though.

“Cruel fate, in that case,” she replied ruefully. She glanced up at the rooftop where Widow waited, staring absently at her nails, rifle leaning against the wall behind her. “I am unavailable in so many senses of the word.” She squeezed his hand and let it go, knowing it would be the last time they met.

Miguel raised an eyebrow, following her look. “Work or girlfriend?”

“It’s complicated.”

Miguel laughed. It wasn’t a bitter, or even remorseful laugh so much as a rueful acceptance of the inevitable. “ _Por supuesto_ , Olivia. With you, everything is.”

Sombra looked at the ground, resisting the juvenile urge to kick at the dirt. She’d looked up to Miguel, once. He’d been stronger than her when they were younger; stood up to bullies, pulled her out of more than a few scrapes. She preferred that version of him to whatever bottom-feeder scraping by he was doing now. She didn’t want to know; she’d rather remember what he’d meant to her before.

“I should go before she kills you,” she said, smiling and jabbing a thumb up at Widow. The sniper’s gaze flicked down at her as though summoned, and she offered her a raised eyebrow and a small, thin smile.

Miguel chuckled, hands stuffed into his pockets, almost managing to hide the disappointment in his voice when he spoke. “She the jealous type?” he asked.

“No, more like the career assassin type.”

“Huh,” he replied, nodding in a mixture of approval and concern. “You do know how to pick ‘em.”

Sombra stepped back, smiling. “I’ve always had good taste.” Wrapping her hand around one of her translocators, she spun it absentmindedly around in her palm. “I gotta go. A lifetime of intrigue awaits. Take care, Miguel.”

“You too, Olivia.”

She turned to step past the flatbed to meet with Widow when she paused and looked back.

“Hey, Miguel?”

“ _Si_?”

“If anyone asks, don’t tell them you saw me?” She looked down at the device in her hand, flickering with purple lights under the shiny stolen tech. “I think I’m better off dead.”

Miguel laughed. “You’ve always been dramatic. Sure,” he agreed. “Never saw you.”

He offered her a final, rueful smile, and turned away to walk across the yard. Sombra watched him leaving, waiting until he got out of earshot. He’d been her friend; he’d stood with her for so long when everything had gone dark. And now he knew who she was.

Perhaps it was best he left still thinking of her as a hero.

“Hey, Widow?” she said quietly through her comms.

“Yes?” she replied.

“Take the shot.”


End file.
